Derwent writes: The Ubuntu Mobile operating system is undergoing its most radical change with a port to the ARM processor for Internet devices and netbooks, and may use Nokia's LGPL Qt development environment as an alternative to GNOME.
During a presentation at this year's linux.conf.au conference in Hobart, Canonical's David Mandala said Ubuntu Mobile has changed a lot over the past year in that it now includes netbook devices in addition to MIDs and the ARM port.
"I worked on ARM devices for many years so a full Linux distribution on ARM is exciting," Mandala said, adding one of the biggest challenges is reminding developers to write applications for 800 by 600 screen resolutions found in smaller devices.
"The standard [resolution] for GNOME [apps] is 800 by 600, but not all apps are. For this reason Ubuntu Mobile uses the GNOME Mobile (Hildon framework) instead of a full GNOME desktop, but since Nokia open sourced Qt under the LGPL it may consider this as an alternative."